My Tender Matador is the fourth book and only novel by Lemebel. It was published in Chile in 2001 by Seix Barral's "Biblioteca breve" collection. That same year it was also published in Spain in Anagrama's "Narrativas hispánicas" collection.[4]
Creation of the novel
The novel's title, Tengo miedo, torero, is the verse of a song by the Spanish singer Sara Montiel (1928–2013).[5] Moreover, within the novel, it is the watchword that the protagonists use to identify themselves.[6] A second title that Lemebel contemplated for the novel is La loca del frente.[7] As Lemebel indicates on a page at the beginning of the book, the novel emerged from twenty pages written by the author in the late 1980s. A series of acknowledgements on that page, including one "to the house" itself, hints at an autobiographical nature in the story's content.[8][7]
Written in the third person, the novel revolves around a main character about whom the narrator describes both what she thinks and feels. Dialogues are written in the middle of paragraphs, without cutting the flow of the text. The book is divided into untitled sections, and at one point some sections dedicated exclusively to Augusto Pinochet and his relationship with his wife, Lucía Hiriart, begin to be interspersed. Both stories, that of the protagonist and her beloved, and that of Pinochet and his wife, run in parallel, interspersed towards the end of the book more frequently, even several times in the same section.[10] Where this parallelism is most accentuated is when the day of the assassination attempt on Pinochet is recounted, through a chronological description of the events, explaining the exact time at which they occur.[11]
Plot
The story begins in the spring of 1986, in a poor neighborhood of Santiago inhabited by many leftists. In the midst of the dictatorship, the capital is full of frequent protests, marches and a certain sense of hope to remove Augusto Pinochet from power. It is in this context that the "Queen of the Corner" ("La Loca del Frente" in the original Spanish), an effeminate travesti in her forties,[12] who rents a dilapidated house to live in, arrives in the neighborhood. Carlos, a handsome and virile young man, helps her to arrange her meager belongings, beginning to frequent the house and also inviting other university friends during the nights with the excuse of being a quiet place to study. Secret meetings, held during curfew, begin to become more and more frequent, and in those in which Carlos can not participate, he stays talking with an increasingly enamored landlady, who despite the requests of her few gay friends, has not wanted to introduce her lover. During these conversations, the Queen of the Corner brings up her past links to prostitution, a broken family, being motherless and being the child of an abusive father, whom she abandoned at the age of 18 when he wanted to force her to do her military service.[13]
September arrives and, as usual, the protests on the anniversary of the coup d'état of 11 September 1973 increase. One day Carlos leaves a suspicious metal pipe at the Queen's house, and then invites her for a walk to Cajón del Maipo, where Augusto Pinochet and his wife, Lucía Hiriart, usually go to rest, accompanied by a strict military contingent. Once there, while Carlos takes photographs and measurements of the terrain, supposedly for university work, the dictator's armored vehicle passes very close to them, together with his military retinue;[14] inside the vehicle, a frivolous, classist, class-conscious, chattering, superstitious[15] and Catholic Lucía Hiriart,[16] reproaches her husband for not being received by the authorities abroad, even in South Africa.[12] Not understanding the thoroughness of Carlos' work, the Queen prefers not to ask him any questions, so as not to look foolish; instead, she dances for him, while he briefly leaves his chores aside to look at her with great astonishment and interest. Later, as they drop her off at her house, they hear in the car a radio report about a raid on weapons of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, a revolutionary and armed extreme left-wing group opposed to Pinochet. Carlos then leaves abruptly, without saying goodbye. Despite this, the Queen is not angry for too long, as Carlos promptly returns to apologize.[14] At the same time, Pinochet, ignoring his wife's constant complaints, realizes that the couple they saw on the way to Cajón del Maipo were homosexuals. Furious, he decides to contact the mayor to set up surveillance at the site.[12]
The next morning, the Queen, who earns her living embroidering tablecloths, goes to leave an order in the upper district, to the home of Señora Catita, the wealthy wife of General Ortúzar, who is organizing a large military dinner for the celebration of September 11.[12] Then the following happens at the same time:
During the long bus ride, the Queen defends some students from the insults of an old "mummy".[note 1] Proud and astonished by her attitude, since she never gets involved in politics, she arrives at the luxurious mansion, but once in front of the dining room, sudden nausea produced by imagining her tablecloth soiled by Pinochet's anti-Marxist military, leads her to leave the place without delivering the order, knowing that she is losing her best client, but at the same time feeling a worthy person for the second time that day.[12]
Lucía Hiriart continues to reproach her husband, this time for her lack of style and her poor life with him, without the luxuries and public acceptance she would like. Pinochet, listening to her in silence and remembering the simple seventeen-year-old girl with whom he fell in love, falls asleep suffering from another of his recurring nightmares.[15]
Later, the Queen goes to visit her friends Lupe, Fabiola and Rana, three homosexuals, also of limited means, who live in the Recoleta district near the General Cemetery. Of all of them, the thirty-something Lupe is the youngest of the group, and the one who brings the men to the house. Rana, on the other hand, is the oldest, with a past as a worker in a refined brothel in the north of the country. The Queen owes it to the latter to have rescued her years ago from alcoholism and misery, teaching her how to sew and giving her room and board. After the Queen surpassed her in the embroidery technique, beginning to take clients away from her, Rana threw her out of the house, and they reconciled sometime later.[17]
Days later, the Queen throws Carlos a birthday party, inviting all the children on her street to try to simulate Cuban birthdays, just as he had told her they were celebrated in the Caribbean country. After all the children leave, Carlos toasts with a pisco for the best birthday of his life, and decides to tell her a secret from his childhood, when he discovered masturbation with his best childhood friend. Already drunk, Carlos falls asleep, and the Queen gently performs fellatio on him, which he later fails to acknowledge was real, opening the possibility that he had only imagined it.[18]
That same morning, Augusto Pinochet wishes to sleep a little longer, avoiding hearing his wife's incessant chatter. However, he dreams of his traumatic tenth birthday, when his mother forced him to invite all his schoolmates, whom he considered his enemies, and so he hid flies, spiders and cockroaches in his cake. But in the end no guests arrived, and so, at his mother's request, he had to eat the cake alone.[19]
The next day runs parallel for both couples as follows:
In the morning, Carlos' companions begin to take the packages from the Queen's house, who by now assumes that they are weapons. The Queen, for her part, takes a heavy order from Carlos to the center, amidst protests and tear gas.[20]
On his return, Carlos takes the last packages away, leaving the house almost empty, and before leaving he confesses to her what she already assumed: that it was all about weapons, that he belongs to the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, and that after all the help she has given, she too is now somehow part of the "Front".[20] He also tells her that he loves her very much, and that he is happy when he is with her. Then they go together by car to return a record player to Recoleta, and they are welcomed by Rana with an eleven o'clock party. After a joyful afternoon, Carlos says goodbye, perhaps forever, but the Queen angrily drives him away, remaining alone and worried in her dismantled house.[21]
After receiving a call from the warehouse on behalf of Doña Catita, the Queen asks to be told that she no longer lives in the neighborhood, and sensing a bad omen, she decides to spend the rest of the afternoon downtown. On the Alameda she finds protest flyers on the ground; as she bends down to pick one up, a carabinero hits her. At the cathedral she joins a protest by the women of relatives of disappeared detainees, which is repelled with tear gas, having to flee into a gallery, where she is guided by a taxi boy to the Cine Capri, a depressing gay porn cinema. Despite his attempts to offer her his services, the Queen is too worried, so she finally leaves the cinema, finding the city in shock, as the attack has already taken place, learning that all the members of the Front have been saved, that seven soldiers have been killed and that Pinochet is unharmed.[11]
Pinochet leaves early with his entourage to Cajón del Maipo, leaving his wife at home with a headache, much to his delight. Due to unexpected road arrangements, they have to go through Pirque instead of Achupallas, the route initially planned. Inside his armored vehicle, the dictator feels invulnerable, except perhaps for those "yellow-nosed" guerrillas of the Front.[22]
Once in his mansion, he tries to rest, but different things make him furious: his secretary's request to review an official speech, an effeminate cadet wandering around his mansion, and a Spanish newspaper where he is treated as a criminal. After lunch he tries to take a nap, but dreams of condors and eagles gouging out his eyes.[11]
Late in the afternoon, they set out on their return to Santiago, asking their retinue to slow down, despite security regulations, to delay their arrival. Suddenly the shooting starts. The soldiers flinch and only manage to hide, but Pinochet's chauffeur, who has defecated in his pants in terror, manages to pull him out of the ambush.[11]
Beach of Laguna Verde Bay, in Valparaíso, where the protagonists bid farewell
In the midst of a shocked Santiago, while Lucía Hiriart gives a press conference and Pinochet continues with fear and nightmares, Laura, another Front comrade,[16] takes the Queen to a bar in Viña del Mar to meet Carlos, who affectionately takes her by cab to Laguna Verde in Valparaíso, where they celebrate. He thanks her for her help to the Front and gives her money so that she can live in hiding for a few months; in contrast, Pinochet and his wife, an angry and loveless married couple, hide out in Viña del Mar's Cerro Castillo, with more discreet security. Carlos tells the Queen that he is leaving early tomorrow morning for Cuba, and in a fit of passion, asks her if she wants to go with him. She, for her part, replies that "I will be grateful for that question for the rest of my life", but declines the invitation, stating that if their love did not materialize there, then neither will it do so in another country.[6]
Connections with reality
An M72 LAW rocket launcher, used by the "frentistas" during the attack
The novel revolves around several real events in Chile in 1986. The Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front did indeed exist, claiming responsibility for the extensive power outage that affected half the country on 1 May of that year, in commemoration of International Workers' Day.[23] Later, on 7 September, its members carried out an attack against Pinochet on the road to Cajón del Maipo, from which he managed to escape unharmed.[24]
Also real are the constant protests, the violence of the Carabineros de Chile to repel the demonstrators, and the announcements of Radio Cooperativa, which played an important role in opposing the military dictatorship, denouncing its human rights violations as much as possible.[25]
Reception and critics
For the launch of the novel, Lemebel, known for his performances and travesti appearances, wore a deep red dress and a feathered headdress, in a ceremony with a large audience of followers, politicians, filmmakers, journalists, and writers. The work was among the best-selling books in Chile for more than a year and had international recognition, being translated into English, French, Italian, and German.[26]
Tengo miedo, torero received positive reviews in the national press. Willy Haltenhoff wrote for the newspaper La Nación that its writing was the "most original and portentous, due to its baroque nature, of the Chilean literary environment, an imagery of exceptional linguistic richness", associating it with Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman, and with the films Strawberry and Chocolate and Before Night Falls. José Promis, for El Mercurio, highlighted the "carefree, irreverent, sarcastic and, above all, intentionally provocative style that the author has always exhibited", saying that reading this work "startles, disconcerts, but entertains and has a gratifying flavor". Camilo Marks, for the magazine Qué Pasa, highlighted the work's theme as unique, considering it "in part the most outstanding work of his talent".[5]
In 2002, Tengo miedo, torero was nominated in the third edition of the Altazor Prize of National Arts, in the category of "Narrative",[27] but lost to Cuentos completos by José Miguel Varas.[28]
Adaptations
Lemebel, together with the Chilean Business theater company, founded by Rodrigo Muñoz, Claudia Pérez and Mario Soto, adapted the novel into a play, which premiered in 2006. The same company had previously adapted his book of chronicles, De perlas y cicatrices (2000), and a few years later premiered Cristal en tu corazón (2009).[29] The play Tengo miedo torero, as well as its actor Rodrigo Muñoz, were nominated in 2006 in the VII edition of the Altazor Award of the National Arts.[30][31]
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